but it's not the right thing for our security. >> but will congress jeopardize the deal by demanding new sanctions? >> after all, the ayatollah wants that bomb, and as he continues to organize these rallies in downtown in the capital where people are yelling death to america. >> we shouldn't get a deal just to say we have a deal. we have to get a deal that decreases the likelihood of military intervention and stops the development of a nuclear weapon. i don't think that this deal meets that standard. it doesn't meet those tests. and what we're learning about john kerry's secret mission when he was still a senator to launch a back channel to the ayatollah.

good day. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. we begin with this breaking news from the supreme court. the justices have now decided to take up a key piece of the president's health care law and make a major ruling potentially about how religious beliefs can shape the way a business operates. let's bring in nbc justice correspondent pete williams. tell me about the case that they've taken up and what the focus of their review now will be, pete? >> reporter: the focus will be a simple question, does a for-profit company have religious freedom and, if so, can it refuse to follow the contraceptive part of the obama care, that says private insurance can companies must be provided that pays 100% of their contraceptive services. the court has agreed to take two cases, one involving a nationwide chain of arts and crafts stores called the hobby lobby owned by a religious family in oklahoma. they say requiring them to pr provide this contraceptive care for four types of contraception would amount to abortion, in

their view, and violate their religious freedom. the second case is one from a e mennonite family that owns a woodworking company in pennsylvania and they make a similar claim. now the hobby lobby won in the court of appeals. the court of appeals said, yes, a for profit company does have religious freedom, but the mennonite company in pennsylvania lost in the appeals courts, so that's one of the reasons the supreme court is stepping in because the lower courts are divided on the question. the supreme court has never decided before, does a for profit company have the right to decline to observe a federal law based on their freedom of religion? >> this, of course, from the court that memorably upheld obama care but given the divisions on this court, this is going to be a very high-profile decision as well. thanks so much, pete williams, from the newsroom. national security adviser susan rice is now on her way back from afghanistan after being stiffed by hamid karzai on what the u.s. thought was a final deal for post-war american traps to remain as military

advisers. joining me now from afghanistan is nbc's chief foreign correspondent richard engel. richard, rice thought she was nailing down a deal that had been negotiated by john kerry and, instead, we had either karzai being karzai or karzai trying to play to the post-war taliban or other aspects of local politics. what is your assessment? >> reporter: well, i'm not sure exactly what karzai is trying to get out of this deal, and a lot of people are speculating and there's a great deal of frustration. most afghan analysts that we've spoken to believe that this has to do with local politics and that this has to do with karzai securing a future political position for himself. in april karzai is supposed to step down. he can't run for another term. and he wants his political allies it to win and he wants himself to have a future role in politics. so how does he ensure that? he can ensure that by --

to be strong and seem like he's pushing the americans aside, that he's a person who came here and built a modern nation telling the americans, thank you very much, it's time to leave. maybe that's what he's thinking, but he's risking a tremendous amount. when you talk to afghan leaders, when you talk to american commanders, they say there is a good chance that this country could fall apart, that the afghan security forces, which are totally dependent on u.s. air support, on u.s. dollars, on int intelligence reports. right now when afghan security forces go out and do a raid, sometimes the americans are still giving them maps with xs on them and say go hit that target. what happened when the police and the afghan national army don't get those maps anymore and they don't get the $4 billion a year anymore? karzai probably doesn't know. he's making one calculation and

military officials certainly don't know. >> and you also have to wonder whether karzai is looking for a little attention knowing that the u.s. is now moving into a completely different direction with another of his neighbors, iran. all of that and other implications. >> reporter: very interesting, difficult negotiations. to negotiate a deal with iran, with persia, right across the border, and now trying to negotiate a deal long term with afghanistan and to protect the legacy of america's longest war because for a lot of the soldiers that we've been speaking to, it's just personal. they come here time and time again. they've invested so much. they put their family lives on hold. they've lost friends here. so the collapse of afghanistan would be in a certain way a personal affront to what they have done. so you also have to keep the investment, personal and otherwise, that the united states military has put into

this conflict, and that's also part of the calculation. >> in fact, richard, as you've been reporting over the years and over the last two weeks, that's probably the most important part of the calculation. thank you so much for all of your work, for your reporting today from from afghanistan. and that security agreement between afghanistan and the united states has tremendous implications for both. not just for the military, also for the women of afghanistan who have made significant progress in the last 12 years because of the demands of the united states. since the u.s. military has been present there. what could happen if the u.s. begins drawing down troops and doesn't have this legal relationship, the so-called bf sa, the post combat agreement? joining me are two senators fighting for women's rights in afghanistan. robert casey of pennsylvania an have you both on in this pre-thanksgiving preholiday day. first to you, senator ayotte.

the work on women in afghanistan, we can see this all evapora evaporate. we saw hillary clinton and laura bush recently at a conference on this very subject. this is something madeleine albright pushed for when she was secretary of state. how do we make sure that women's rights and their representative rights in the parliament as well as education for women and other rights for women in business are not completely blown up by failure of this kind of agreement? >> well, andrea, i want to thank you for having us on, and i want to thank senator casey. he and i have an amendment to defense authorization that requires the department of defense to come up with a strat they focused on the security of women. we don't want to go back to the horrible scenes in the soccer stadiums with what the taliban did to women and the reality is afghanistan cannot succeed without women having security in the country, having economic opportunity, having the opportunity to have an education. you just can't succeed as a

society by taking half your population and keeping them in the dark ages. and that's what our amendment is about, ensuring that there's a strategy in place. ensuring that when they have upcoming elections that they can go to the polls, that the afghan security officials will treat women well and also give them opportunities to serve. and that's what senator casey and i are working on to put an emphasis on that with our department of defense. and we cannot let women go back to the dark ages of when the taliban were in charge of afghanistan. >> senator casey, what should we do if karzai won't sign this agreement and susan rice came back empty-handed? >> well, andrea, i think we have to push very hard to get an agreement because what we want to make sure is the contribution and the sacrifice made by our fighting men and women and really our taxpayers as well, that the policies that were put in place, the structures put in place, will be enduring even when our troops aren't on the

ground, so to speak. and president karzai has, i think, a fundamental responsibility to not only make sure that the next step goes well, the agreement itself, but also that the elections result in a situation where there's been a free and fair election that will allow a transition to new government. i said the same directly to him back in the early part of this year when he was visiting washington, that this is not just part of his legacy, the kind of country that he turns over to his successor, but it's also an obligation he has to us, to the sacrifices that our taxpayers made and especially our fighting men and women. so we have to push him very hard on that as well as to push him and others by way of the defense department on this effort to ensure that women are a much larger share of the afghan army and police and the other provisions that are part of our amendment that senator ayotte

summarized so well. >> i want to ask both of you, also, about a story i have confirmed is accurate. and it involves something that preceded your tenure in the senate. the fact that post-9/11 we at one point had a program to turn guantanamo prisoners, the most serious, the most dangerous of the detainees to try to separate them from the rest of the detainees in a place where they had mattresses, television, better food, and turn them into double agents and reinsert them. that's the photo of it abandoned. and reinsert them back into al qaeda, release them to try to get them to be cia sources within al qaeda. very hard to penetrate. it has since been abandoned but what about that 2003-2006 was

the time frame of what the cia was doing. >> well, andrea, obviously i'm still learning more about what they were doing and i've only seen the reports, but here is what concerns me. we know we have close to a 29% re-engagement rate from those released from guantanamo who we suspect or we know have gotten back in the fight against us. so when i juxtapose that to the cia actually thinking that they can convert these people, i think it was very ill conceived program for them to think that because these are some very hard core individuals and many whom have been released by both administrations have gotten back in to fight us and our allies, unfortunately. >> and, senator casey, what do you say about this? >> well, andrea, without being exposed to the intelligence on that kind of a program or a full recitation of the reasons why our government would engage in

that, it's difficult to evaluate. but it has a degree of recklessness to it i would be very concerned about. it did happen a while ago. i think the most important thing we have to do now is ensure that whe wherever we have our interests at stake, whether it's in afghanistan or anywhere else, that we put in place structures that allow us to have the kind of results that we hope for and our fighting men and women have made possible when they made the sacrifice. that's why i'm glad kelly ayotte is working with me and working with others to ensure that at least in afghanistan we have a situation where women cannot just be full participants in afghan society but be a part of the security of the country by

way of their work as a police officer, as a member of the army. and we know if there's more participation by women in the security of the country we know a lot of the children in afghanistan will be less likely to be radicalized and, therefore, more likely to contribute constructively to the future of the country. >> it does sound like that a intelligence deal is right out of homeland. senator ayotte, before i let you go, what about the reports now that john kerry as chairman of the foreign relations committee, was the first to initiate that secret back channel to iran in oman by initiating it and following it up, of course, with top level state department officials who worked out the deal in private outside of the reach of the allies? >> well, andrea, obviously i don't know all the details of secretary kerry's contact as a member of the foreign relations committee. but i do have serious

reservations about the interim agreement and i'm concerned that we're letting our foot off the gas on sanctions for very little in return. and i know this is an issue we're going to take up when we return to congress including an announcement recently by senator menendez to put in a backstop of sanctions to ensure that the iranians follow through. but i have real concerns because the agreement as it is doesn't call for the dismantling of centrifuges. are they going to give up terrorism? what about reapization? obviously the plutonium reactor, there are significant issues of concern that i know congress will want to address. >> senator ayotte and senator casey, thanks to you both very much. coming up, more fallout over the iran deal and john kerry as secret agent? we'll explain. ready to run your lines? okay, who helps you focus on your recovery? yo, yo, yo. aflac. wow. [ under his breath ] that was horrible. pays you cash when you're sick or hurt? [ japanese accent ] aflac.

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president obama is insisting hamid karzai sign that agreement before the end of the year. susan rice's quick trip is the latest evidence nothing is easy when it involves hamid karzai. joining me in our studio "the washington post" chief, first, eye ra iran. ann, you have probably not slept, 70 hours of negotiations without a break. the deal as it final ly came through. if the sense that this is only a very preliminary first step, as senator ayotte was pointing out, could we start the centrifuges yet this is a short window and they are telling the americans we need to move before the hard-liners in both countries close in. >> yeah.

there was a real sense that now is the time to make a deal and make the best one you can in a period of time that was shrinking on both sides, political pressures at home for both countries as you mentioned and, also, a sense that further negotiation wasn't getting anywhere. secretary kerry had a feeling at one point during the very, very long day on saturday into saturday night that they'd gone as far as they could, and he thought a deal was possible, but he didn't really know whether they could tally do it. and it wasn't there was some mystery to it. it was a matter whether these guys in this space and that time could close the deal. ultimately they did at 3:00 a.m., as you know, and kerry scored a diplomatic coup, but it only goes so far. >> a and it's really something he launched as chairman of the foreign relations committee. he fwan to work that route and followed up with bill burns and

jake sullivan from the state department, the vice president's office, and hammered out the actual wording which explains why both israel and the frieenc memorably in early november balked because they were given la language that had been worked out in private. >> they said, huh? the most interesting thing to me in that the new he details we know of secretary kerry's early diplomacy before he was secretary is that not only did that begin before he was secretary of state, it began well before the current regime in iran took power. and so the obama administration was going out on a limb, going on two years ago by saying maybe, possibly, there's a deal to be done here. let's get an intermediary to feel them out and see whether this is possible. it certainly didn't lack possible under the ahmadinejad re jaem but he only had a year

left in office so they were trying to think ahead of it. it could have gone terribly wrong and we would have never known about it. >> and ruth and susan, let's take a look at the president in all of this. susan, first of all, the president yesterday out west a heckler, we've seen this happen before, but this was as close as a heckler has ever gotten to the president and the secret service moves in and the president stops the heckler on the subject of immigration from being taken out. l let's watch. >> stop deportation. stop deportation. >> what i'd like to do it shall no, no, don't worry about it, guys. >> storm did deportation. >> okay, let me finish. let me -- how about -- these guys don't need to go. let me finish. no, no, no. he can stay there. let me -- [ applause ] hold on a second. if, in fact, i could solve all of these problems without passing laws in congress, then i would do so. but we're also a nation of laws.

that's part of our tradition. and so the easy way out is to try to yell and pretend like i can do something by violating our laws. >> susan, he took the moment and trade to make it work for him, to make the point that he's been trying to make on this trip. he can't could do it himself. >> totally skillful in handling a heckler. you couldn't have handled a heckler in a better way. doesn't this underscore the failure to make any progress on an immigration bill when that was something, his number one agenda item when he got re-elected last year. so it kind of plays both ways. i think it underscores his weakness when it comes to delivering something, but his strength as handling a heckler right on the scene. >> the reason why immigration, one reason, immigration is going nowhere is the president is even weaker politically with congress because of the failures of the rollout of the health care. >> absolutely. you get re-elected.

you have new capital but limited capital, limited time, and it has been frittered away by all the problems. and the mismanagement. and i thought it was very interesting to listen to the president say, well, if i could do this by executive order i would. remember, he did decide to suspend some enforcement of the immigration laws by executive order or administrative regulation. so it's never been quite clear to me why he makes that distinction. >> when we look forward now, he's facing a congress that is going to be coming back, harry reid is going to bhoe off the sanctions so despite this bipartisan effort to push for more sanctions, i don't think anything will reach his desk in the next six is months and if it does, he will have to veto it or else the deal blows up. >> right. and they've been pretty clear that that's what happened. he would veto it if the senate

can't hold back. that doesn't stop the near term political problem for obama having struck this deal. he's now got pro-israel senators and congressmen of both parties criticizing him for cutting a deal they say is a bad one for israel. he has that problem. then he has the foreign policy problem of israel saying you cut a bad deal, and saudi arabia and the united arab emirates also saying, not good enough. >> and, susan, when we look at this next period, we know it does shorten for a president in his second term, he can still make breakthroughs on foreign policy, but he's got the obvious constraints of senators now looking towards 2014 and feeling very undercut and very threatened, democratic senators. >> and on the foreign policy front, a big breakthrough with iran but huge problems with our ally in afghanistan. i mean, the deal that the administration thought they had reached with hamid karzai now

great uncertainty about that. what does it say that we can reach a deal with iran with whom we haven't had relations in decades and yet an ally with whom we invested so many american lives and american money weigh can't count on? >> and does he have to worry about the supreme court on obama care or will this end up baegeia narrow ruling? >> no and yes. the supreme court agreed to hear a case about whether the obama care requirement that employers provide no cost contraception is constitutional or whether it va lats in this case, imagine this, religious rights of corporations. yes, you heard that right. >> they are people. >> they are people, so the question is whether they have religious rights and whether those religious rights, if they do have them, can be violated in this way or infringed. even if this falls, it's important to keep in mind two things. it is not the central component of obama care, though it is for some of us an important

component and a controversial one. and, second of all, it doesn't mean that women won't be able to obtain contraception. i know my friends in the reproductive rights community will be mad at this. it just means you have to pay for it out of your own pocket. so let's keep it in perspective. >> it does mean women who have the planes will not be able to pay. >> women will have a much harder time accessing health care. thank you for helping me out there, getting me out of trouble. >> always great to see you. and before everybody starts tweeting in, i know corporations are people. that was irony. thank you all very much. it's been 2,455 days since robert levinson went missing in iran making him one of the longest americans held in history. a retired fbi agent was last seen during a private business trip to an iranian territory on march 9, 2007. the fbi believes he's alive and being held somewhere in southwest asia. the white house has confirmed today that the president raised

lev levinson's case with the iranian president rouhani and requested his help in finding levinson and releasing him. today the white house release add statement saying as we approach the upcoming holiday season we reiterate trying to locate mr. levinson and bringing him home safely to family, friends, and his loved ones. time for the your business entrepreneurs of the week. david, john, and maria own stores on main street in nyack, new york, gearing up for small business saturday with gift card discounts, a wish list program, and an art walk. for more on getting customers to shop small, watch "your business" sunday morning at 7:30. ♪ ♪ you get your coffee here. you get your hair cut here. you find that certain thing you were looking for here,

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♪ nothing says, "you're my #1 copilot," like a milk-bone biscuit. ♪ say it with milk-bone. right now the winter weather, the rough weather moving through the south and up to the northeast leaving millions of holiday travelers hoping the worst is behind them by the time they hit the highway. gabe gutierrez is live at atlanta's hartsfield airport which is a nightmare on a good day. it doesn't look too bad there but there have already been a lot of flight delays. >> reporter: hey there, andrea. you're right. it's not too bad here, dealing with chilly temperatures and some heavy rain.

so far no ice. that means no ice, no major delays here. we looked at the departure board and some flights today 10, 15 minutes not too bad. there is a handy interactive map that we've been following that is flightaware.com's misery map. some minor delays in charlotte as well as memphis, here in atlanta you see a little bit of red but, again, not too bad. what should be interesting about the storm as it moves in a the northeast over the next day or so you're not seeing a widespread delay as we saw the past few days especially in dfw but as it moves in a the northeast and brings snow along with it, there could be more. so far in the u.s. today, well, that includes international a flights coming in and out of the u.s. there have been 80 cancellations, certainly not as bad as we've seen the past couple of days. here in atlanta the world's busiest airport, about 63 million passengers come through year. it's an airport we are watching. again, as i said, so far no major delays. we're just dealing with heavier rain, no ice. andrea, back to you. gabe gutierrez, thank you

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that your favorite dutch apple pie starts with a golden flaky crust, wedges of fresh fuji apples, and a brown sugar streusel on top. so she made her dutch apple pie just like that. marie callender's. it's time to savor. i have a big meeting when we land, but i am so stuffed up, i can't rest. [ male announcer ] nyquil cold and flu liquid gels don't unstuff your nose. they don't? alka seltzer plus night fights your worst cold symptoms, plus has a decongestant. [ inhales deeply ] oh. what a relief it is. syria has not decided whether it will participate in a peace conference next month, actually scheduled for january 22, to break the cycle of civil war. . this as the humanitarian crisis continues to worsen. today the world health

organization confirmed two new cases of polio in the nationwide outbreak. the u.n. agency says it plans to vaccinate more than 20 million children in the middle east against the highly infectious virus. rm toer british foreign secretary and president and ceo of the international rescue community just returned from a trip to the region and joins mae now. thank you very much for being with us. good to he see you again. >> good afternoon, andrea. good to be with you. >> let's talk about first the polio outbreak and what can be done and what you witnessed in going to refugee camps. >> i think there are two things about the polio outbreak that are significant. first, this is a highly infectious disease for every one child who shows polio, there's another 200 who are carrying it and are infectious with it. there's a real danger there and obviously the who, the world health organization, an important role to play but so do organizations like the international rescue committee that has the krcritical links o the ground, the so-called cold chain can deliver vaccines. the second thing it's a pointer to the scale of the catastrophe

that's going on inside syria. you have a country dissolving in front of your eyes, nearly one in two people displaced from their homes, the u.n. says 2 million cut off from aid. as you know and as you've reported two and a half, 3 million, jordan, an ally of the united states, has 650,000 refugees in there. so you have a regional crisis as well as a syrian crisis. >> and it does seem from all of our reports here in the united states, that the white house has decided to narrow its focus, the main focus now is iran, major problems with karzai on the exit strategy from afghanistan, and really not putting as much focus on syria in the aftermath of the agreement with putin to tray to deal with the chemical weapons. but really not making any progress on the main issue which is the civil war. >> well, the civil war is driving instability right across the middle east. i think you're right to say

since the afwraegreement on che weapons, the attention of the world has shifted away from the syrian catastrophe. that's certainly the case that the humanitarian situation has gotten worse in the last two months. i was in the middle east last week, i was in lebanon and in turkey and looking at our operations across border and the tales of the refugees were absolutely chilling. they're talking about fathers, husbands, brothers slaughtered, they're talking about children who have been caught by sniper fire. and you've got the outbreak not just of enormous health risk but also the 60% of hospitals in the country destroyed. this is now something that deman the attention of the world and aid agencies like the international rescue committee we can stop the dying, smuggle health supplies in, help the wounded in neighboring states, but we can't stop the killing. that's what we need politics for and the politics need to be taken up several notches to bring this to a halt. >> do you think that the focus

on iran is well placed, he though? i know you spent a good number of years as foreign secretary dealing with the iranians when the u.s. couldn't and wouldn't, but now we know they were back channel negotiations as well. what is your take on this very preliminary agreement as far as it goes? >> i spent three years negotiating with the iranians. the fear was always that they like negotiating so much that they never come to an agreement. and so i think you've got to credit a real success for the diplomats led by secretary kerry in delivering this agreement. i think they'd be the first to say that an interim agreement isn't the same as a comprehensive agreement. and while it's true that iran has agreed to scale back various activities there's a much bigger prize in the comprehensive agreement that is now being sought, some big barriers, big hurdles to be achieved. the most significant difference for me now is the iranian people have made their voice clear in the election of president roh rouhani, tired of the economic

decline and i think that's cruiserweighted an opportunity, the sanctions, if you like, have had their effect, created a diplomatic opportunity. and i don't think it's right to say that somehow the iran negotiations have taken attention away from syria. it's not as if the world can't be these two things at once. they're actually linked and i would argue that the syrian crisis demands attention at the same time as the iran negotiations. it's not a matter of one or the other. >> and, in fact, if we have a new relationship with iran it could be very helpful towards syria because there could be collateral benefits given that iran has been a pipeline of rearming the assad regime. there's a story that's been breaking here also from the associated press about an intelligence operation that was under way after 9/11 here where guantanamo detainees, some of the most hard core, were taken, given better housing and were right out of homeland, the tv show, the popular tv show, are where the cia attempted to turn them as double agents and

reinsert them back into al qaeda with the obvious side benefits if that could be achieved. just theoretically, what do you think of that kind of operation? >> well, i haven't seen the story that you're referring to. i can't really believe it was based on a tv show but i suppose anything is possible. what i can say is that obviously iran's support for assad, president assad, support for hezbollah is a major force of destabilization across the region. the regional issues as well as the nuclear issues are addressed head-on must be a good thing. i think that for 34 years obviously the united states hasn't had any diplomatic relations with iran. when i was foreign secretary, secretary of state, we did have an embassy in tehran. we did negotiate with them. i think it's important to go into these talks with our eyes wide open and that seems 0 to me what the administration is doing. the humanitarian issue, the consequence of it, something i'm dealing on a day-to-day basis. you can see the consequences, the military consequences of the

support that assad has gotten and the stories of the refugees and that's my current concern. >> thank you so much, david. thank you for being with us today. very good to see you again. and in terms of nostalgia and hollywood, what piece of hollywood movie nostalgia could be more valuable than the ruby slippers or a model of the starship enterprise used in ""star trek""? that would be the maltese falcon statue from the 1941 classic starring humphrey bogart. it sold for a whopping $4 million at auction in new york city yesterday. the film history buffs say that the prays is a testament to what some consider the most important movie prop ever. >> what is it? >> the stuff that dreams are made of. >> huh? across america people are taking charge

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a year later the people of newtown, connecticut, still trying to sort through the tragedy. now the report from the state attorney with a minute by minute account of the events and a detailed look into the past of the killer. here is part of the report as covered by msnbc's rehema ellis. >> reporter: the report gives the best insight yet into the 20-year-old man who perpetrated the worst school shooting in history. adam lanza acted alone, the entire horrific event over with in five minutes ending with the gunman's suicide. according to the report lanza blasted his way into the school

with his bushmaster rifle, a walking arsenal he carried two pistols and fired 154 of the more than 300 rounds of ammunition he carried. this man lost his daughter, lauren, in sandy hook. >> her school picture. >> reporter: one of six adults killed along with 20 children. he's read most of the report but chooses to to remember lauren's bravery rather than learn any more about her killing. >> i'm proud of my daughter. that she stood there in front of 15 little kids and took the bullets. that is amazing. i'm very proud of her. >> indeed. it's hard to even deal with the pain and the grief and the pride of the survivors, the victims' families, but what is your takeaway from what we've learned particularly about adam lanza and his mother and her knowing

his troubled mental health, but her having him have access to weapons? >> reporter: it's a very difficult subject. so many people have thoughts of what did this mean that the report unveils for us. was she an enabler? did she make it possible for adam to continue to have this reclusive life that he had? she was in the house with him. she made it possible that they only communicated via e-mails and they were living in the very same house. it was her home and she had to know that he had covered the windows of his room with green garbage bags and so he was essentially closing the world out. and his mother who, according to the report, was even planning to purchase him a gun for a christmas present. she got rid of a cat because he didn't like it. she put up a christmas tree and took it down because he didn't want to celebrate christmas and didn't like the tree. so in some ways the report suggests that she was giving in to all of his weaknesses and his mental difficulties.

but in other ways the report fails to tell us exactly what was going on, and it, i think, creates for many people even more questions than it answers and certainly that question of why did adam lanza do this in the beginning? but, yes, a very, very detailed report about a very troubling relationship that this son had with his mother. >> from spending time with the families, does this in any way -- in any way address their wounds or does it make it even more difficult for them to accept? >> reporter: the man that you just saw in that clip that you played, he's determined that he's not going to focus so much on adam lanza. the families have been kept abreast of what was going on in this investigation over the last year. because the authorities, i suspect, didn't want them to be left out and to hear something before the authorities informed them. but many of the families yesterday did not want to talk. they wanted to be left alone, if you will, to experience this in

their own way. but laura was a teacher at the school. he says he wanted to talk to me yesterday because it's therapeutic says he wanted to talk yesterday because it is therapeutic for him to talk about how much she cared and loved the children. he chooses to think about that every day. and he says because she was taken from him at such a violent and sudden way, he's decided what he's going to focus on is life and how precious life is and how important it is to live life every day. >> rehema ellis, thank you for reporting and we understandably should focus on the heroism of those who helped protect the children. thank you. >> for sure. >> and which political story will be making headlines in the next 24 hours is next on "andrea mitchell reports."

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which political story will make headlines in the next 24

hours, let's talk turkey with susan page. the two turkeys, one and a spare, they are waiting to go to the white house tomorrow. they are we willard intercontinental hotel, blocks from the white house. luxurious hotel, five stars presumably at least. susan, what do they do with these turkeys as they wait for official pardon of the thanksgiving turkey? >> we can talk about iran and afghanistan and health care, what will get the most attention, the pardoning of the thanksgiving turkey. these two turkeys already have gotten guarantees they are not going to be anybody -- >> dating back to george bush. >> one year john kennedy when they sent the turkey over, he sent it back and let's save that turkey's life.

>> a little token at the time avo indicating for that. they have been training for months. >> how do you train? >> they spent hours standing on a table that's designed to be covered with the same kind of linen, so they don't freak out when the cameras go off. >> there's a rumor that one dances to beyonce. >> the owner of the turkeys in minnesota has been playing music for the turkeys. apparently he played beyonce. all in an effort to get them accustomed to the idea there's going to be noise and they shouldn't lunge at the president and hurt him. >> that does it for this edition of "andrea mitchell reports." tomorrow, david cohen in charge of sanctions on iran. and of course, we'll have turkey. remember, follow the show online and on twitter. here's a look what's next on "news nation." >> quite an ending there.

we're following developing news at the white house now responding after the supreme court decides to take up another challenge to the health care law. can a for profit company refuse to cover on the grounds of religious freedom? pete williams will join us and aclu. travel nightmare, many flights delayed up to four hours. we'll have the latest information from the weather channel, it's impacting everything in the air and on the ground. police officials in some of the nations biggest cities are calling it the knockout game with teenagers pr s randomly at strangers. some saying this is a urban myth. i'll talk with a writer that calls this the latest phony panic. it's all coming up on "news nation." lovely read susan. but isn't it time to turn the page on your cup of joe? gevalia, or a cup of johan,

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[ male announcer ] you'll be able to visit any doctor or hospital that accepts medicare patients. plus, there are no networks, and virtually no referrals needed. see why millions of people have already enrolled in the only medicare supplement insurance plans endorsed by aarp. don't wait. call now. is caused by people looking fore traffic parking.y that's remarkable that so much energy is, is wasted.

streetline has looked at the problem of parking, which has not been looked at for the last 30, 40 years, we wanted to rethink that whole industry, so we go and put out these sensors in each parking spot and then there's a mesh network that takes this information sends it over the internet so you can go find exactly where those open parking spots are. the collaboration with citi was important for providing us the necessary financing; allow this small start-up to go provide a service to municipalities. citi has been an incredible source of advice, how to engage with municipalities, how to structure deals, and as we think about internationally, citi is there every step of the way. so the end result is you reduce congestion, you reduce pollution and you provide a service to merchants, and that certainly is huge.

hi, everyone, "news nation" is following developing news this hour. for first time the u.s. supreme court will rule on whether for profit companies have religious freedom of the a challenge against president obama's health care law. the justices will consider if the law's requirement that employers offer free birth control coverage for employees violates a company's religious freedom. the white house has now responded with a statement saying in part, as a general matter, our policy is designed to ensure that health care decisions are made between a woman and her doctor. the president believes that no one, including the government, or for profit corporations to be able to dictate those decisions to women. nbc news justice correspondent pete williams joins us with more. pete, the comparisons to citizens